In other news...

In other news...

Features from other publications this week

Following the realisation of Jean Nouvel’s long-awaited One Central Park in Sydney, Australia, Reuters visited the verdant new plot with a film crew in tow to capture video footage of the project in action. This is no ordinary residential urban scheme however as Jason Langer of the Robert Bird Group explains in the video below.

On finding that areas of the project site were somewhat devoid of natural light, the Robert Bird Group took it upon itself to ‘create its own sun’. To do so, an array of mirrors was inserted onto the roof of the smaller building to reflect sunlight onto a heliostat projecting from the taller building.

This sunlight was then projected down into a new public plaza and park and through a glass ceiling to illuminate a shopping mall below. Langer notes that while his team found several examples of past projects where sunlight had been successfully redirected once, this is the first scheme they are aware of where light has been reflected off two buildings to illuminate a final space…read more

Construction has completed on the first gallery at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Designed by Jean Nouvel for the Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC), the Louvre Abu Dhabi is due to complete in 2015 with 9,200 sq m of art galleries.

The design has been inspired by the original Louvre gallery in Paris which first opened to the public on the banks of the River Seine in 1793. The Louvre Abu Dhabi will sport a transparent glass roof, through which dappled light will fall as the result of the interlaced steel cladding dome of the roof.

Construction Week has now reported that the first of the permanent galleries (one of the largest spaces in the museum) has completed after a year of onsite works. A high proportion of the concrete work at the basement levels have also completed, including the Energy Centre and the Security Screening Facility, a 7m-deep basement to be used by authorised vehicles transporting the museum’s artwork…read more

According to Dr Katie Hall, Chief Technology Officer at WiTricity, we’re looking at a future with no wires or power outlets where you can pick up a lamp and replace it anywhere in your house without affecting how it operates and your mobile phone charges throughout the day without being plugged in. This is a world of wireless electricity and apparently we’re only years from achieving commercial products that operate in this way.

The discovery was made by MIT physics professor Marin Soljacic after he began to question the complexities of continuing power supply beyond a basic wall socket. The resulting technology, currently under exploration by WiTricity, involves a coil of wire called a resonator which generates a magnetic field, which in turn generates electricity in the air. Once an electronic device is placed within this field, it can benefit from this energy.

WiTricity has already tested the ‘perfectly safe’ system on a mobile phone, a laptop and a television with plans to release commercial devices that feed off wireless electricity within the next few years…read more